Health-care sleight of hand

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/17/AR2010031700678_pf.html
Health-care sleight of hand

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 17, 2010; 10:19 AM

How predictable: There they go again.

The Republicans are trying to make an issue of the Democrats' parliamentary maneuvering in the last-ditch, this-is-it, gotta-get-it-done push for the health-care bill.

As if ordinary people cared about boring legislative process stories.

I mean, why should anyone get exercised over the idea that the House may well pass this thing without a recorded vote?

Oh. When you type the words, it does sound kinda. . . . underhanded.

Hasn't the president been calling for an up-or-down vote? Doesn't that mean individual lawmakers have to, well, vote up or down?

Isn't the message that this Senate bill is so odiferous that House members want to hold their noses and then run screaming from the chamber?

And then there's the name game. The chief backer of such an approach, Rep. Louise Slaughter, has given rise to such monikers as "Slaughter House Rules."

Besides, it doesn't seem to me that it really provides much camouflage. If a House Democrat votes to pass a measure full of fixes -- and the Senate health bill is therefore "deemed" to pass as well -- won't voters conclude that the lawmaker in question supported Obamacare?

I deem this "self-executing process" to be self-destructive. I know it's been used before, but it's not like reconciliation, which is basically a majority Senate vote that the GOP was all too happy to employ for major legislation during the Bush administration. At the very least, it's a PR setback for the Democrats as we get down to the final days.

Think it doesn't matter? The tactic dominated yesterday's news cycle, not a debate over health insurance, with such headlines as CBS News' "Bypass Operation."

"In the face of Republican attacks Tuesday," says the L.A. Times, "leading Democrats defended a controversial endgame maneuver that would allow them to pass the Senate version of a healthcare overhaul without taking a direct vote on the legislation's most divisive provisions. . . .

"Republicans used the same parliamentary shortcut to avoid difficult votes when they controlled Congress, but on Tuesday they accused Democrats of being high-handed and unseemly."

As for the numbers, says the WSJ, "Democratic lawmakers may be tempted to vote against the health-care overhaul plan pending in Congress because it remains unpopular with a broad swath of the public. But a new poll suggests that those who do so risk further dispiriting the core supporters who Democrats need to energize for the November mid-term elections."

The WSJ/NBC survey "found that opinions have solidified around the health plan, with 48% calling it a 'bad idea' and 36% viewing it as a 'good idea.' That gap is consistent with surveys dating to the fall.

"Democratic voters are strongly in favor of the legislation being pushed by President Barack Obama, particularly constituencies such as blacks, Latinos and self-described liberals. Those groups mobilized in 2008 to help elect Mr. Obama but now are far less enthusiastic about voting in this year's mid-term elections than are core Republicans."

The right is riled up over the House maneuvering, as we see in this Rich Lowry column:

"So a bill sold under blatantly false pretenses and passed in the Senate on the strength of indefensible deals would become law in a final flourish of deceptive high-handedness. How appropriate for what would be the worst piece of federal domestic legislation since the fascistic, recovery-impairing National Recovery Act of 1933 or the Prohibition disaster of 1920. . . .

"Ordinarily, differences between Senate-passed and House-passed bills are worked out in a conference committee, producing a compromise bill for consideration by both houses. Instead, Democrats want the House to pass an un-amended Senate bill that will be cleaned up later. But the Senate bill is so radioactive that the House wants to sidestep a direct vote on it. No conference committee, no separate House vote: Change has indeed come to Washington. .

. . "If they force the bill through, Democrats will have 'made history,' although not the kind they imagine. Obamacare will constitute a ramshackle monument to partisan willfulness and unscrupulous salesmanship that should forever discredit its architects."

And the Wall Street Journal editorial page pulls out the rhetorical stops:

"We're not sure American schools teach civics any more, but once upon a time they taught that under the U.S. Constitution a bill had to pass both the House and Senate to become law. Until this week, that is, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving to merely 'deem' that the House has passed the Senate health-care bill and then send it to President Obama to sign anyway. . . .

"Democrats would thus send the Senate bill to President Obama for his signature even as they claimed to oppose the same Senate bill. They would be declaring themselves to be for and against the Senate bill in the same vote. Even John Kerry never went that far with his Iraq war machinations. . . .

"This two-votes-in-one gambit is a brazen affront to the plain language of the Constitution, which is intended to require democratic accountability."

They must have run out of space for the part about the founding fathers turning over in their graves.

The Weekly Standard's Noemie Emery sees it as dysfunction junction:

"A stranger moment in politics has seldom been seen. A vast expansion of government that affects every one of the country's 300-plus million inhabitants may be passed by a hair against fierce and fiercely repeated public opposition by a Congress that no longer speaks for its voters -- most of whose members are angry and scared. They are afraid of their voters, and mad at each other, or rather, the Democrats are: The liberals are mad at the centrists, the centrists are mad at the liberals. Democrats in the House are angry at those in the Senate, and deeply suspicious of being betrayed. The centrists are also mad at Obama, for picking the wrong cause (health care and not the economy), doing it in the wrong way (big and expensive, not incremental and smaller), and pushing them to risk their careers in backing a cause and a program neither they nor their constituents want. . . .

"This lopsided body, in which Democrats are clawing to eke out even a one-vote majority, is a dead Congress walking, out of step with most of its voters, who on this issue at least are temporarily represented by the naysayers on the Republican side of the aisle. Health care reform has dissolved the Democrats' coalition, and with it much of their moral authority."

But the left is pushing back. Here's Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:

"Now Republicans are headed for the fainting couch over use of the self-executing rule, despite the GOP's repeated reliance on the same procedure. . . .

"As expected, the responding tantrum is nearing full force. The WSJ editorial page is outraged; Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is suggesting laws approved through the self-executing rule aren't laws that Americans have to follow; and assorted GOP voices, on and off the Hill, are characterizing the deem-and-pass approach as unconstitutional.

"Of particular interest were complaints from Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Rules Committee, who called use of the self-executing rule 'very painful and troubling.' It's interesting -- Dreier found the rule neither painful nor troubling when he used it in 2006.

"Indeed, while the deem-and-pass approach used to be rare, its use became far more common 15 years ago -- right after Republicans took over Congress. . . .It's a familiar pattern -- Republicans open doors, and then whine incessantly when Democrats walk through them."

But both sides can play the history game. Washington Examiner columnist Mark Tapscott recalls a time in 2005 "when the Republican majority in Congress approved a national debt limit increase using a self-executing rule similar to the Slaughter Solution.

"Guess who went to federal court to challenge the constitutionality of the move? The Ralph Nader-backed Public Citizen legal activists. . . .

"And now for the kicker, guess who joined Public Citizen in that suit with amicus briefs:

"Nancy Pelosi. Henry Waxman. Louise Slaughter."

At the Nation, Ari Melber says ignorance has worked against the Democrats:

"There is a remarkable public fixation on 'government' for a bill that has been stripped of any government expansion -- no public option, no Medicare buy-in, no major federal program beyond the budgeting process. But many people just don't know what's in the bill.

"Then, on the politics, the Democrats are clearly carrying the costs of 'Big Government' -- but without netting the benefits (like rallying the base with a public option, or wooing 60-somethings with a lower Medicare age). The predicament evokes Obama's odd reluctance to capitalize on the exaggerations of his opponents -- if they're going to call you a socialist anyway, you might as well take the political space and run with it."
2010 watch

For months now, the Republicans have been chastising Obama for blaming the economic situation on George Bush. But in a stroll down memory lane, the New Republic's John Judis recalls how the GOP's hero reacted during the 1982 midterms when unemployment eventually topped 10 percent:

"Reagan blamed the Democrats for leaving him with 'the worst economic mess in half a century.' 'Slowly, but surely, we are lifting the economy out of the mess created over the past several decades,' he said. 'We are on the road back.' The Democrats, he charged, had caused the recession through profligate spending, which had caused inflation, which had caused unemployment. By cutting spending and taxes, Reagan claimed that he was showing the way toward a recovery. 'If we stick to our plan, if we keep the Congress from going back to its runaway spending, the recovery will take hold, strengthen and endure,' he said.

"Reagan stated this theme not once, but hundreds of times and in virtually the same words, and it was featured in national Republican ads. When the Democrats charged that his policies had created the recession, he accused them of playing "the blame game," all the while blaming them for the recession. . . .

"Obama and the Democrats may not need to exaggerate or distort past history to the extent that Reagan did in order to make a case for themselves. But they have to make some kind of political case and, so far, they've been hopelessly inept at it."

Should they study tapes of the Gipper?

Unemployment, along with health care, is one of the many reasons the Democrats may get hosed in November. But Atlantic's Marc Ambinder highlights a sometimes-overlooked fact -- Democratic overachievement:

"The 2008 election was anomalous in the sense that not only did the marginal seats go their way, a large number of seats that Democrats haven't held in eons were swept into the Democratic category by the party's superior get out the vote operations in traditionally non-Democratic states. Brownstein notes that Republicans never held more than 216 seats at the height of their recent majorities, while Democrats now hold in excess of 230.

"There are at least a dozen seats, maybe 15 to 20, in the Midwest, South and West that will revert back to their natural states simply in the absence of the 2008 turnout machine. Democratic under-enthusiasm, the high unemployment rate among the millenals and low turnout of minorities will redound to the benefit of Republicans. A corollary here is that ideological voting tends to trump demographic patterns in midterms."

Turnout matters, and freshmen are always most vulnerable in their first reelection attempt.
Hidden history

Former Baltimore Sun reporter Antero Pietila finds that his newspaper once played a key role in residential segregation. Take this 1910 editorial: "The white race is the dominant and superior race, and it will, of course, maintain its supremacy. The attitude of the Southern man and the attitude of an average Baltimorean toward colored people is one of helpfulness. He sees in them not simply wards of the nation but descendants of those whom he and his ancestors trusted and respected for their loyalty and affection."

I've seen that sort of shameful rhetoric in clips from old Southern papers, but Pietila reminds us that Maryland had much in common culturally with what became the Confederacy. "In 1899," he reports, "Baltimore Democrats campaigned under the slogan, 'This is a white man's city.' "

Howard Kurtz also works for CNN and hosts its weekly media program, "Reliable Sources."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/16/AR2010031603581.html?wpisrc=nl_pmopinions

Democrats show their true colors in push for health reform

By Michael Gerson
Thursday, March 18, 2010;

The final outcome of the health-care-reform debate is uncertain -- who can predict where a writhing eel will land? -- but we have learned a few things already.

First, we know that President Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership could not persuade a majority of Americans of the wisdom of their plan -- and have largely ceased to try.

As of this writing, a president who seems willing to interrupt prime-time programming on the slightest pretext has not scheduled a speech from the Oval Office to make his final health-reform appeal. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is working her parliamentarians overtime to achieve the congressional equivalent of the Immaculate Conception -- a law without a vote. One gets the impression that Democrats would prefer health reform to slip by the House in a procedural maneuver on a Friday night during the NCAA basketball tournament -- which it might.

The most visible Democratic domestic priority of the past 40 years must be smuggled into law, lest too many Americans notice. Politicians claiming the idealism of saints have adopted the tactics of burglars. Victory, if it comes, will seem less like a parade than a heist.

Liberals tend to blame this state of affairs on the brilliance of Republican fear-mongering. Meaning the slashing wittiness of Sarah Palin? The irresistible charisma of Mitch McConnell? The more likely explanation: Americans are engaged in a serious national debate about the role and size of government, in which the advocates of government-dominated health care are significantly outnumbered and vastly outmatched in enthusiasm. America, despite liberal fear-mongering, has not become "Glenn Beckistan." But it is not yet Europe.

A second thing we have learned during this debate is that the Democratic Party's commitment to abortion rights is even more central to its identity than health reform. Pelosi's initial concession to pro-life Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak -- preventing federally subsidized health plans from covering abortion -- was made for show. Some argue that the House and Senate approaches to abortion are similar. But a statement from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops explains why this analysis is wrong. The Senate-passed bill allows subsidized plans to cover abortion by collecting an extra payment from every enrollee, as long as at least one other insurance option in a region doesn't cover abortion. This is a departure from the status quo, which not only prohibits the use of federal funds for elective abortions but also prohibits the use of federal funds for health plans that cover such abortions. Says Stupak: "I really believe that the Democratic leadership is simply unwilling to change its stance. Their position says that women, especially those without means available, should have their abortions covered."

But this stance by the Democratic leadership violates an informal social agreement that has existed for decades, in which abortion is generally legal but citizens who object to the practice are not required to pay for it. Those who support the Senate bill are participating in what is effectively the largest expansion of federal involvement in abortion since the Hyde Amendment limited that role in 1976.

Third, we have learned that the president and congressional leaders are not serious about entitlement reform. The problem here is not only accounting tricks and the assumption of unprecedented courage on the part of future Congresses when it comes to Medicare cuts -- though these are bad enough. The main source of irresponsibility is that the revenue-gaining measures in the health bill -- particularly Medicare cuts and taxing Cadillac" health plans -- would be used to create a new entitlement instead of repairing an existing one. The greatest cost of the current reform is its opportunity cost.

The unfunded liability of America's current entitlements is more than $100 trillion. Medicare will eventually require a massive infusion of cash under a congressional entitlement fix. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the Medicare actuary have pressed the point that Medicare savings can be used to pay future Medicare benefits or to finance new spending outside Medicare -- not both. When the entitlement crisis arrives, Obama will have already spent much of the resources required to meet it, leaving growth-killing new taxes as the main, remaining option. A value-added tax, anyone?

For some elected Democrats, the prospect of expanding health coverage is a moral goal worth the compromise of any principle and the adoption of any necessary method. But they need to enter their vote with open eyes. The passage of this legislation would decisively confirm an image of the Democratic Party that many have worked to change: partial to big government, pro-abortion and fiscally reckless.

mgerson@globalengage.org



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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/20100317-deem-and-pass-midterms.html?wprss=thefix
Republican lawyers warn Democrats of "deem and pass" consequences

1. Less than 24 hours after House Democratic leaders floated the idea of using a parliamentary procedure to avoid a recorded vote on the Senate health care bill, a group of Republican lawyers -- including the legal counsels for the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee as well as high profile campaign attorney like Ben Ginsberg of Patton Boggs and Cleta Mitchell of Foley & Lardner -- penned an open letter making clear that such a tactic would not make Democrats immune from attacks on the bill in the fall campaign.

Citing an assertion from Rules Committee ranking member David Dreier (Calif.) that "a vote for the rule is a vote for the Senate bill," the group wrote: "We believe it is accurate to state in public communications that the effect of a vote for any rule illustrated in [Dreier's memo] is a vote for the Senate bill and all of its provisions." Put simply: Republicans believe that House Democrats using the "deem and pass" maneuver in no way prohibits GOP candidates and party committees from attacking them for "voting" for the Senate legislation.

The letter along with House Republican leaders' vow to force a vote on the use of "deem and pass" is a reminder that GOPers believe the health care bill -- no matter the outcome of the vote later this week (or weekend) -- is something close to a silver bullet for them in the coming midterm elections. "The point here is that there is no cover for Democrats on this vote," said Ken Spain, communications director of the NRCC -- adding that the other side is "resorting to political and legislative trickery" to try and keep from being attacked in a campaign setting.

While all of the parliamentary jockeying is almost certain to be forgotten by voters by this fall (if it was ever noticed in that first place), Republicans want to make sure that targeted Democrats know that they will be held accountable for every nook and cranny of the Senate legislation whether or not they go on the record in support or opposition to it.

2. Congress' approval rating is starting to approach historic lows in two new national polls, a sign of the growing volatility in the electorate. In the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll -- released late Tuesday -- just 17 percent approved of the job Congress is doing while 77 percent disapproved. Since a mid-January NBC/WSJ survey, congressional disapproval has soared by 10 points while approval has dipped by four points.

"Memo from the American public to Congress: you stink," said Democratic pollster Peter Hart who conducted the poll along with GOP pollster Bill McInturff. "There's no safe place."

With so much dissatisfaction directed toward Congress, the two parties remain in a deadlock. In the NBC/WSJ poll, 45 percent of people said they preferred a Democratic-controlled Congress while 42 percent said they wanted Republicans in charge of Congress -- numbers roughly unchanged from a late January survey that showed Democratic control with the support of 44 percent and Republican control with 42 percent backing. The latest weekly tracking poll from Gallup affirmed that division with 47 percent saying they preferred a generic Democratic candidate and 44 percent choosing a generic Republican. The closeness, however, is a significant change from Gallup's last tracking poll in advance of the 2006 midterm election where 51 percent chose a generic Democratic candidate and 40 percent opted for the generic Republican.

3. Former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff bested appointed Sen. Michael Bennet in Colorado caucuses -- assuring himself the top ballot spot in the August primary and delivering him some measure of much-needed momentum.

With all precincts reporting, Romanoff took 51 percent to 42 percent for Bennet. On the Republican side, Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, a Tea Party favorite, was in a dead heat with former lieutenant governor Jane Norton. Buck had been the underdog based on advantages for Norton in fundraising and endorsements, and his campaign deemed the closeness of the results a victory.

The big story, however, was on the Democratic side since it marked the first time that Bennet, who was appointed to the office in 2009 by Gov. Bill Ritter (D), stood in front of the electorate. The Bennet forces smartly downplayed the results in advance of Wednesday's vote -- the vote did matter more to Romanoff's chances -- but will almost certainly face several days of negative press following his loss. (Hoping to mitigate that press hit, Bennet released his first television ad of the campaign on Wednesday.)

History is important here, however: Ken Salazar, the most popular Democratic politician in the state, lost the caucuses to someone name Mike Miles but went on to crush Miles in the primary and claim the seat in the general election.

4. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney waded into the contested South Carolina governor's race primary, throwing his support behind state Rep. Nikki Haley in a move rife with 2012 implications.

Romney praised Haley's "conservative record of fighting wasteful spending" and "advocating for smaller, more efficient government." Romney's Free and Strong America PAC will donate to $3,500 to Haley's campaign and participate in an event in the Palmetto State for her on April 1, the PAC announced.

Those close to Romney said that the key factor in his endorsement of Haley was a sense of loyalty -- she had been a supporter of his during the 2008 South Carolina presidential primary. But, no candidate with an eye on a run for president does anything in South Carolina without an eye on the future.

Seen through that lens, there are at least two 2012 motivations we see behind Romney's support for Haley. First, the three other gubernatorial candidates -- Rep. Gresham Barrett, state Attorney General Henry McMaster and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer -- are all being supported by other national figures in the party while Haley lost her high-profile benefactor when Gov. Mark Sanford (and his presidential ambitions) imploded. (Former Sen. Fred Thompson is with Barrett, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is with Bauer and Sen. John McCain is with McMaster.) Given that Romney had no horse in the race, backing Haley gives him a one in four chance of being behind the likely governor -- a vast improvement from the zero percent chance he had prior to the endorsement.

Second, Haley is a favorite of an element of conservatives in the state and by endorsing her Romney affirms his bona fides with that group -- an always-helpful exercise in advance of a presidential primary fight. Romney's political operation -- led by PAC director Matt Rhoades -- is far more advanced than any of his potential 2012 rivals and this endorsement suggests he is moving to exploit that edge.

5. Former Maryland governor Bob Ehrlich (R) said a challenge to Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D) was "in the mix" of his political options -- setting off a furor among party strategists. Or not. According to informed party strategists, Ehrlich is not considering a Senate run instead, as we have written before in this space, he is an all-but-announced candidate for governor -- seeking a rematch against Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), the man who beat him four years ago. Even in polling conducted by O'Malley's campaign, Ehrlich is very much in the game, trailing the incumbent by a 51 percent to 41 percent margin in a recent survey.

Maryland is among the most Democratic states in the country but as Sen. Scott Brown's victory in January showed that any and every state is potentially in play in this sort of national landscape.